Current Lakeville City Councilmember Matt Little publicly announced, just a a few minutes ago, that he has decided to run for the mayor of Lakeville in 2012. He notes:

Lakeville needs leadership. Leadership that is accessible to citizens, that is reliable, and that is objective, credible, and innovative on the issues. Since being elected last November, Councilmember Matt Little has provided Lakeville with that leadership.

Matt Little indirectly responds to those within the City of Lakeville in his press release for his mayoral bid with this:

He attends numerous community events where he interacts with attendees. He also makes himself available through every medium available to citizens. This includes traditional methods like meeting for coffee, sending letters, and phone calls but he’s also known for his use of new communication tools. He is the only member of the Lakeville council who maintains a website where citizens can engage with him via e-mail or a survey, and he utilizes Facebook and Twitter as mediums for open communication. “I attempt to be available through whatever means are available to citizens. It’s about communicating through what citizens want to use, not what I prefer.”, Little says.

Lazy Lightning asked Councilmember Little about his use of social media and if he believed that the few people who may utilize it for communicating directly with him is worth the time sink it has become which may be detracting from more important issues within the city. Little said while he uses both Twitter and Facebook, his Twitter account isn’t leveraged in quite the same way as his Facebook account. Councilmember Little noted that while he spends less time on policy discussion on Twitter he instead uses it for, “quick little spins on things,” and links to important local news stories. His Facebook page, however, has more than 400 followers and he states he believes, “there are always more people looking at it than are directly interacting with it.”

Little went on to say, even if it’s only a couple people interacting with him on social media site, it’s definitely not a time sink if it’s helping those people be involved. In response to the opinions of the other councilmembers Little said, “Even if the four other people on the council don’t find it useful, it most certainly is because people are using it now.” He argues his use of social media is a ‘non-issue’ and does not believe it was a worthwhile use of anyone’s time to setup a special meeting to debate social media use on the council.

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Little’s press release then touts his belief that he has maintained his campaign promises something which he notes, “It’s important to do what you say you are going to do,” and that the constituency is generally “skeptical” about elected officials because so many have failed in meeting the goals they promised during their campaigns. He then provides the passage below as evidence of his commitment to doing exactly what he promised:

During his campaign for City Council he was vocal about the need for budget cuts, new administrative staff for the Police Department, increased community involvement, and to re-focus new spending on needed infrastructure. Budget cuts were passed during the first four months he was in office, new administrative staff for the Police Department was hired within eight months, and an aggressive plan to repair Lakeville roads was passed within ten. This was all done while reducing the levy for 2012.

Lazy Lightning asked Councilmember Little to clarify his statements being that he is only one member of five on the council. Is he really able to safely attribute all of these items solely to his own work? Little responded he feels the addition of new admin staff is definitely attributable to him while budget cuts are only half his ideas as the city staff brought the other half to the table. Councilmember Little noted repairing infrastructure is at least “mostly attributable” to him as people became informed through the campaign process and their support is why the changes occurred. He continued by noting his involvement with both the speeding on Flagstaff issue and Highview Heights hockey rink reopening as he spent the time to closely work with those in the community to get others involved and put their hard work in front of the council.

Lazy Lightning then asked Councilmember Little about his desire to run for Mayor of Lakeville and what benefit he thought it would serve his constituency over his current position as a councilmember. Councilmember Little responded that he believes even though the City of Lakeville does not have a strong-mayor setup, the mayor sets the tone for the what the rest of the council works on and the tone of the work environment as well. Little believes that in order to have an effective council they need to have healthy disagreement however while he wants to improve policy, the current council seems to make personal attacks instead. He feels that if he can take control of the gavel he’ll be able to use it as a tool to encourage respect which will be beneficial for everyone on the council, staff, and the general public as well.

You can view more on Matt Little’s website here. He has agreed to respond to respectful questions posed by Lazy Lightning readers below. So feel free to go ahead and comment on about your thoughts on Lakeville Council member Matt Little’s decision to run for Lakeville’s Mayor in 2012.

10 Responses to “
Lakeville’s Matt Little to Run for Mayor in 2012! ”

If you are a Lakeville resident this is big news. If your are resident of a neighboring suburb it’ll be fun to watch, especially the interaction with the constituency, other candidates and Lakeville council members. Local politics can be grueling… sometimes even a contact sport. Should be fun to watch.

If Mr Little wants to post on Twitter or Facebook during city council meetings then I see nothing that can stop him. Little is an elected official. He has an election certificate. It is not up to his fellow council members or city staff to pass judgment on how he goes about his job – that is for the voters to decide.

I don’t particularly care about this announcement, as I don’t live in Lakeville. I will comment though that social media is here and it is popular. Politician’s that don’t utilize it are putting themselves at a BIG disadvantage, especially among young voters.

I don’t use twitter much, but I do like it. Having said that, I think it is inappropriate for a participant in a meeting to post a running commentary of what is going on in that meeting. You wouldn’t get away with that in the private working world. In the world of politics things get personal and contentious as a matter of routine. Tweeting while in a meeting is less than smart because tweeting an emotional reaction to something is quite often a recipe for stankshit. Just ask the countless politicians, pro athletes, company employees etc that have gotten into big trouble or drawn public ire for letting people know their “thoughts”. Sometimes you react to something, think something, and maybe should be kept to yourself. IME people who tweet prolifically have trouble determining where that line should be drawn.

As I said, I don’t have a vote in this race. I also am not blindly loyal to any party. If there were two good candidates the fact one of them tweets, especially if its derisive, when they should be working will make me less likely to vote their way.

regarding running commentary. I don’t see an issue with it as long as it doesn’t become a back-channel for someone to make comments during a discussion rather than step forward and actually make those comments in the public forum. Such behavior would be cheating the process.

to be honest, I’d love to see the city itself use twitter or facebook in a useful way. I.e. once the meeting minutes are available, tweet out and facebook post links to the main topics in the minutes.

I’m glad to see a competitive race. Sure Matt’s young, but I believe he’ll do fine.

If the current mayor wants to complain about other people’s comments, he needs to tend to his own house first. One stray comment he made against a city worker nearly cost Lakeville taxpayers more money than the entire salaries of the police administrative workers which were debated for probably hours in total.

We’ve clearly seen both good and bad examples of social media used in public service. The Minnesota House has had serious ethics complaints involving Twitter. If posts are informative in nature instead of attacks, then I support it.

A model Facebook or Twitter post would be something along the lines of:

A tweet like that gets across important information and could even include a link to the meeting schedule for citizens who would otherwise stay home unsure if comments were being taken on street improvement. Having been to a few City Council meetings, it’s often difficult for a citizen to tell whether comments are pertinent to the topic of the meeting. The key is: we want to encourage democracy in public meetings, not keep citizen voices away.